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Pierrot’s Silence

Marika T. Knowles

The theatrical personnage Pierrot first appeared on the French stage in the late sev- enteenth century. Beginning as a white-suited naif, his face framed by the halo of a simple straw hat, his jacket ornamented with a long row of white buttons, his shoes tied with pink bows, Pierrot would metamorphize over the course of the next two hundred years into a rail-thin mime, whose face was caked with white powder and crowned with a black skull-cap. Throughout his career on the stage, Pierrot has ex- ercised a particular fascination for visual artists, who seem compelled to represent Pierrot in their work, often at the expense of characters whose role may be of great- er narrative significance. There is something about Pierrot, and this ‘something’, I would suggest, is his silence, and the opportunity his silence creates for nervous, vi- sionary outpourings on the part of his viewers and his critics. Pierrot’s silence takes a number of different forms, each of which I will address in this essay. On the one hand, there is Pierrot’s silence as a theatrical character, and the way his visual appear- ance on stage references the silence of the work of art amidst the ‘noise’ of text-based theatre. There is also the way Watteau represents Pierrot’s silence in visual form in the large painting, Pierrot, dit Gilles (Plate V). This painting, as I show, not only represents silence, but as well is a silent object, a fragment unmoored from history, with very little in the way of text to pin it to its notoriously laconic creator, Watteau. Somewhat paradoxically – but it seems that all attempts to speak about silence are destined for paradox – this essay will try to explain what Pierrot’s silence speaks, and what, finally, it refuses to speak.

Performing Silence

Artists who represent theatrical characters face the challenge of translating a sonic, spatial, temporal medium into a silent and still medium. Over time, different visual conventions develop in order to signify movement and speech through specifically visual analogies. For example, Poussin’s complex texturing of the surface of his paint- ing through hand movements, varied postures, and contrasting vectors succeeds in creating the impression of noise and action. Pierrot, however, presents the unique problem of a character whose presence on stage is often, already, silent and still. Thus the artists who represent Pierrot must replicate the sonic effect of this silence and still- ness within a silent and still medium. This is not as easy as it might seem, because as 134 Marika T. Knowles Pierrot’s Silence 135

painting developed in France over the course of the seventeenth century, painters had This partnership between the silent performer and a speaking audience would con- wanted to avoid silence at all costs, expending great efforts in order to make painting tinue throughout Pierrot’s history as a theatrical character. Yet this relationship al- speak. Faced with a character that was more like a painting than like theatre, most ready suggests one way that viewers respond to the silence of the work of art : by artists would have recoiled. Watteau, of course, did not, because his interest in theatre imaginatively filling the work’s silence through sympathetic projection. After the was not textual, but rather, atmospheric and suggestive. Like a great white canvas heyday of the fair theatre, the Comédie Italienne was restored to its privilege as the moving about the stage, Pierrot had the potential to represent, within the theatrical Opéra Comique, and Pierrot’s role lost much of its significance.5 Like the other char- scene, the silence of visual art. As such, the different ways that audiences chose to acters, he sang couplets and danced minuets, a content valet to his flirtatious mas- interpret, and to fill Pierrot’s silence throughout his history on the French stage, give ters and mistresses. In the early nineteenth century, however, Pierrot again rose to insight into how viewers negotiated the silence of the work of art. prominence as one of the most beloved characters of the popular Parisian boulevard Let me begin, however, by noting that Pierrot was not always silent. On the stage theatre. Like the fair theatre of the early eighteenth century, the boulevard theatre of the Comédie Italienne, Pierrot could be quite voluble, telling off his master or was subject to censorship and strict controls, all intended to protect the Comédie mistress in deliciously frank terms. In this capacity, Pierrot played the traditional Française, bastion of text-based theatre. The Théâtre des Funambules, where Pierrot role of the Hofnarr. Protected by the pretence of foolishness, the clown could speak appeared, was at its inception a pantomime theatre, without rights to speech.6 As the on topics about which the other courtiers were forced to remain silent.1 While this hero of the pantomime, Pierrot never spoke a word or made a sound. Instead, the au- privilege signified Pierrot’s status as an exceptional outsider, a quality that definitely dience spoke for him, shouting encouragement from the cheap seats in the paradise, attracted Watteau to the character, there were other moments in the repertoire that shushing those chatterers who kept them from ‘hearing’ Pierrot.7 The audience was specifically aligned Pierrot with the silent work of art. One of these moments came boisterous and unruly ; sometimes they wanted to ‘listen’ to Pierrot, sometimes they in Columbine Avocat Pour et Contre, when a nearly blind painter mistakes Pierrot for wanted to fill his silence with their own words. a blank canvas and covers his face with paint. Pierrot, sobbing, cries, “he morbleau, Certainly, this was the desire of the Romantic critics who flocked to the Funam- prenez donc garde, Monsieur ; je ne suis pas le Tableau, moi”.2 bules and penned accounts of what they saw. Jules Janin, one of the most notoriously Yet Pierrot, in his capacity as a valet, standing silently beside his master, Harlequin, prolific theatre critics of the early nineteenth century, spilt gallons of ink describ- awaiting orders, would indeed have appeared like an empty canvas, awaiting the ing Pierrot and heralding the identification between “le peuple” and the mime who artist’s intervention. The sudden eruption of a canvas into the play’s intrigue would played Pierrot, Jean Gaspard, ‘Baptiste’, Deburau.8 Until Janin began writing about have referred to the traditional base of commedia dell’arte scenarios, a brief outline Deburau in the feuilleton dramatique of the Journal des Débats, Deburau was known of scenes and situations that was pinned up backstage and called a canevas.3 This only to his working-class audience. Janin gave Deburau a voice in fashionable circles, controlled form of improvisation could be compared to the creation of a painting : attracting critics like George Sand, Gustave Flaubert, and Charles Baudelaire to the the canevas provided a sketchy outline, akin to the charcoal sketch that preceded the Funambules. Yet Janin’s voice for Deburau was very much the critic’s own creation, a painting of a canvas, and the actors’ performance filled in the design, as colour filled strong interpretation of the mime’s silence. in the black and white sketch. Play within a restricted surface, using words, but also On 1 November 1830, Janin began his feuilleton with an account of the Comédie physical movement, underpinned the Comédie Italienne, opposing it to the linear Française’s production of Le Nègre.9 Ozanneaux’s tragedy depicts the struggles of a unfolding of a drama structured through text. slave and his son, fatally enamoured of his white soeur du lait. Brushing aside the In 1697, Louis XIV expelled the Comédie Italienne from Paris because of a ru- play’s soft philanthropy, Janin declares the subject of the play the same old “Brutus”, moured slander against Madame de Maintenon. Yet the King’s edict succeeded only but a Brutus clothed in dark skin, a wig, and a décor tropique. “Pour ma part”, Janin in silencing the troupe, whose players moved to the fair theatres, where they con- declares, “plus j’écoute ces espèces de chefs-d’oeuvres, comédies musquées, comé- tinued to perform, but without the privilege of dialogue.4 The players made a vir- dies morales, drames romantiques, drames en grands et en petits vers, et plus je suis tue, and a joke, out of the enforced silence. Bawdy physical pantomime appeared persuadé qu’il n’y a qu’un acteur vraiment comique à Paris ajourd’hui ; qu’il n’y a in lieu of spoken words, or characters would pop onto stage, deliver a line, and pop qu’un drama vraiment intéressant ; cet acteur, c’est Débureau, le Gille des Funam- off while another character appeared to speak his line in turn. Finally, placards in- bules […]”.10 scribed with dialogue descended from above the stage ; the audience would sing the Listening to text and song – “plus j’écoute” – is exactly what Janin protests against, dialogue aloud to the tune of popular vaudevilles. As a sign of their approbation, and because theatrical language has become affected and corrupt, an endless collage of their complicity, the members of the public gave the players a voice. “petites phrases entortillées, du persiflage délicat, du gros rire, des mots à double sens, 136 Marika T. Knowles Pierrot’s Silence 137

des allusions piquantes, des ingénuitiés sans fin […]”.11 For all the tirades of Molière, a character that stands for the visual above the textual. Pierrot’s distinctive whiteness for all the “vers croisés” of Ozanneaux, Deburau substitutes “une casaque de pail- metaphorically represents a blank page, a canvas, or canevas, as opposed to a script. laisse, un peu de farine sur la figure, quatre chandelles pour son théâtre, deux violons Ultimately, theatre’s visual element, divorced from its text, offered a point of imagi- faux, et pour le poëte, le premier décorateur venu qui lui donnera une forêt, un tem- native entry and identification for audiences and critics exhausted by avalanches of ple, une taverne […]”.12 For words, Deburau substitutes his costume and his white- words. floured face ; for author, he takes a set-decorator. The visual spectacle pre-empts the performance of text. Yet it is just this absence of text within the play itself that al- lows the verbose critic to intervene, to speak on behalf of a silent actor and his silent, illiterate public. Silence In, and Around, Painting Deburau performed his own mystique by rarely speaking in public. When De- burau killed a man by hitting him with his walking stick, a curious public flocked When Pierrot appeared on stage, audiences felt compelled to fill his silence. Watteau to his trial in order to hear him speak.13 It was this particular incident that so fas- compels his viewers to do the same in his large painting of Pierrot. By making this cinated Jean-Louis Barrault, whose accidental encounter with Jacques Prévert and dynamic so very blatant, the painting forces viewers to reflect upon their evident de- Marcel Carné in Nice in 1943 led to the making of Les Enfants du Paradis (1945).14 sire to project upon the passive object. The painting poses the question, why can we This historical epic restages in meticulous detail the Funambules and the Boulevard not be satisfied with silence? Rather than take Pierrot’s silence as a sign of resistance, du Temple of the 1830s. Its recreation of the pantomime theatre, as well as the long we want to believe that his silence is for us, an opportunity created, not to be lost, to sequences that recreate particular pantomimes, has been interpreted as a tribute to make things mean as we wish. the era of silent film, when France was a preeminent producer for the international Watteau makes Pierrot’s silence into his subject by having the figure turn directly market.15 towards the viewer, in a frank appeal for the viewer’s attention. Yet Pierrot provides The film juxtaposes Deburau, played by Barrault, with the master of orality, Fred- no clue in his body or gaze as to how the viewer is meant to respond to this request. erick LeMaître, played by Pierre Brasseur. In LeMaître’s final performance, which If movement and contortion of the body made painting ‘speak’ in the context of aca- sets into motion the events leading to the film’s denouement, Brasseur appears in demic history painting, Pierrot declines to perform this visual equivalent of text.17 blackface as Othello. In this calculated decision on the part of the screenwriter His posture, within the economy of painted expression, expresses silence. Prévert, blackness, text, and speech oppose whiteness and silence. Interestingly, Ja- Standing at attention, Pierrot submits himself to the viewer as the valet presents nin’s polemical rejection of text-based theatre had also juxtaposed a verbose actor in himself to his master, as the artist stands before his patron, as an empty canvas blackface (Ozanneaux’s ‘Nègre’) and a silent actor in whiteface (Deburau’s Pierrot). stands before an artist. When the visibly impaired painter of the Comédie Italienne This duality would appear as well in the very first “talkie”, The Jazz Singer(1927). mistook Pierrot for a blank canvas, Pierrot was most likely standing at attention, In this hybrid sound and silent film, the son of a conservative cantor finds success awaiting the orders of Harlequin, who had just summoned him. Just as Harlequin’s – and a voice – singing in blackface. A character’s donning of black makeup heralds order would have filled Pierrot with purpose, the painter’s brush attempts to fill the sound’s definitive entry into cinema. surface that seems to present itself so receptively. The silent, inexpressive figure is -in The transition from silent to sound cinema would give rise to the same criticisms terpreted as a figure that awaits the words of others. And by turning himself towards that animate Janin’s account of Deburau. Just as Janin bemoaned the pitter-patter the viewer, as if awaiting orders, Pierrot presents himself as incomplete. Incomple- of bourgeois comedy, critics of the talkies argued that trite plot-lines and incessant tion is another significant device through which silence can become manifest in a dialogue suppressed the true strengths of the cinematic medium.16 Whereas silent work of art. By asking the viewer to give him his orders, Pierrot manifests his own cinema allowed for long travelling shots or the vivid and abrupt cuts of Eisenstein’s lack of a voice that completes him. Yet incompletion is also a quality that can be montage techniques, sound films required a banal shot-reverse sequence. The purely produced over time, as the work drifts away from – or is forcibly separated from – its visual element of film was thus subjected to the requirements of dialogue-furthered original context. intrigue. Nineteenth-century Paris was filled with objects that had fallen silent. Revolution- Pierrot’s life as a theatrical character traces the historical iterations of French thea- ary upheaval and the wrath of the mob had displaced thousands of objects, sending tre’s relationship to text from the late seventeenth through the mid-twentieth cen- candelabra, paintings, tapestries, and bibelots pell-mell to the vast dépôts of the Re- tury. The very nature of the theatrical medium is contested through the presence of publican, then the Imperial government.18 Separated from the context that had made 138 Marika T. Knowles Pierrot’s Silence 139

them meaningful, not to mention the paperwork that might have provided clues to Copyright image redacted. The image can be viewed by accessing the final their past, these objects were fragments, and as such, particularly appealing to the Ro- published version here: mantic imagination.19 A fragment, detached from its whole, exists without explana- https://www.degruyter.com/viewbooktoc/product/504368 tory text ; a fragment is silent. Pierrot, dit Gilles is most certainly a Romantic fragment. By this, I mean both that it was discovered during the Romantic period, and that its discovery has given, and continues to give rise to extraordinary storytelling. I turn here to a line of research that I was directed towards during my year at the DFK. Briefly put, the history of the painting, Pierrot, dit Gilles, is completely silent prior to the early nineteenth century.20 There is neither textual nor visual record of the painting’s existence prior to around 1815, and this despite the fact that Watteau’s oeuvre was painstakingly documented by a number of meticulous connoisseurs. If the painting did exist during the eighteenth century, all of Watteau’s many biogra- phers, collectors, and cataloguers chose to remain silent on its account. While it may seem difficult to understand now, when the painting is acknowledged as a great mas- terpiece, by eighteenth-century standards the painting would have been extremely odd. A life-size figure, doing nothing, being silent, far larger than his status deserves or his genre allows – the painting makes no sense according to eighteenth-century 1 Dominique-Vivant Denon, Denon chez lui, ca. 1820, ink on paper, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France – Estampes et Photographie criteria for elevated painting.21 Was Pierrot, dit Gilles regarded as such an embarrass- ing failure that the critics thought it best to keep silent? Yet this too, seems unlikely, given the romanticizing nature of the post-mortem accounts of the painter, which pinceau de cet excellent colouriste”.25 The painting was bought-in and went to the would not have passed over the opportunity to describe a heroic effort on the part medieval curiosities collection of Denon’s nephew, Brunet-Denon. of the reclusive painter, met with incomprehension and ridicule.22 Silence also char- With Denon’s drawing, followed by A. N. Pérignon’s catalogue entry, the paint- acterizes another explanation of the painting’s origins : that Watteau worked on the ing’s silence is broken ; Pierrot, dit Gilles enters the historical record, almost a century painting en clandestine, telling no one of his intentions. In this case, either he passed after the death of Watteau. I have been intrigued by the different reactions that this the painting on, secretly, before his death, or Jullienne, who bought the works left line of my research has provoked. I have been met mostly with excitement and cu- in Watteau’s studio, passed over the work in silence, declining to include it in the riosity, but also with anger, and one time, an eminent scholar encouraged me, as it Recueil Jullienne.23 were, to keep silent.26 Critics are perfectly right to point out that I have no proof that The painting’s first recorded appearance is, fittingly, not textual, but visual. Be- the painting is not by Watteau. My point is that they too have very little in the way fore his death in 1826, Dominique-Vivant Denon sketched the salon of his home- of evidence.27 Both parties stake their claims on argued probabilities. I find that it is qua-cabinet on the Quai Voltaire (fig. 1). Through the salon’s open doors is seen the both more interesting and more responsible to break the silence of the painting’s his- antechamber where Denon hung the largest paintings in his collection. Pierrot, dit tory by initiating a dialogue between a number of possible narratives. This is a richly Gilles, sketched by Denon, appears above a mantelpiece decorated with vases and a perplexing situation, the exploration of which can only help to illuminate the way stuffed parrot (a suggestive juxtaposition given that the parrot, a ‘speaking animal’, that images are received and made sense of over time. In other words, if the work’s references the prelapsarian state, when animals possessed the privilege to speak). In own history is silent, it is still possible to study the ways that historical figures have his notes for a catalogue of his collection, Denon refers fleetingly to the painting made the work’s silence speak. as “un tableau à personnages plus grands que nature, dans lequel il a fait le portrait In an early nineteenth-century Paris haunted by worlds of silent objects, it was de ses amis, et par lequel on peut juger combien il conservait de couleur et de vérité absolutely necessary to invent narratives that would lend voice to the fragments. Al- dans une dimension qui lui était si étrangère ”.24 Denon never indicates, in writing, most thirty years after the appearance of Pierrot, dit Gilles, however, stories began to the provenance of the work. The painting did not sell at Denon’s well-attended post- be told about its ‘discovery’ by Denon. Versions differed.28 If Denon was the source humous sale, despite a flattering catalogue essay by A. N. Pérignon, which called the of the accounts, this is no surprise ; Denon, in his loquaciousness, was not always painting “le tableau le plus important et du caractère le plus original qui soit sorti du precise. Clement de Ris, however, in his telling of the story in 1877, claimed that 140 Marika T. Knowles Pierrot’s Silence 141

Denon found the painting in the Carrousel du Louvre.29 It is not accidental that de Apparently, the marchand felt that the painting’s silence made it unsellable. Hence Ris would choose this backdrop for his narration of Denon’s big find. During the the addition of a ‘caption’, a little line of dialogue to give the painting a voice. It is 1830s and 40s, the Carrousel du Louvre, haunt of antiquarians, curieux, and buyers this plaintive call that reaches the passing Denon. The painting’s acquisition of a of live birds, acquired a legendary status amongst the nostalgic Romantics.30 The voice breaks its own [Pierrot’s] silence, while also breaking into the silence of the neighbourhood was a narrow enclave of four or five streets, a dusty, sunken grid, historical record, lending the painting an origin, although this origin is none other shut off from the rest of Paris by the looming walls of the Louvre.31 than the floating world of the Carrousel, where history is experienced not as text and The adjective most frequently used to describe the enclave was “silent”. While narrative but as the silence of objects whose past is unknown. Balzac noted “les ténèbres, le silence, l’air glacial”, Gautier described the Carrousel Thus the nineteenth-century narrative tells us relatively little about the origins of as “une oasis de solitude et de silence”.32 Baudelaire, in his poem “Le cygne”, re- the painting, except to identify the work as coming from a place of mysterious si- calling the old Carrousel after its demolition, described a staggering swan, escaped lence. In this sense, what the narrative does reveal is the tendency of the nineteenth- from its cage, “traînant son blanc plumage” through “l’air silencieux”.33 The Gon- century intelligence to want to identify mysteries. The rise of the detective novel in courts remembered buying their first drawing, a watercolour by Boucher, at a dealer the nineteenth century signified the desire to both present fragments and then to in the rue Saint Thomas du Louvre, “une rue d’ombre et de silence”.34 Houssaye, piece these fragments together into a meaningful narrative.37 The detective has the finally, boasted that “au milieu de Paris, nous jouissions du silence”.35 Despite be- ability to interpret things – a frayed sleeve – that mean nothing to the ordinary ob- ing a neighbourhood packed with prints, drawings, medals, “des flèches de sauvages, server. To the detective, however, the frayed sleeve indicates that the wearer is left- des armures rouillées, des têtes de Zélandais, des crocodiles empaillés, des bahuts et handed, which means he could not have wielded the dagger with his right hand, and des momies”, not to mention live birds, these authors insist on the neighbourhood’s so on. Thus fragments cease to be silent and come to signify, making the detective silence.36 Sonically speaking, this seems less than likely : the old stone walls, creat- novel into a kind of cathartic therapy for the reader unmoored by the shocks, and ing an echo chamber, must have rung with the sounds of passing carriages and the the silences, of modernity. squawks of unhappy birds, all that rusty armour would have made a ruckus when it The accounts of Denon’s discovery of the painting are not unrelated to the dynam- fell atop the candelabra and the savages’ arrows. Thus the epithet of “silence” referred ics of the detective novel. A fragment presents itself in the form of a clue, a trace not to the actual level of noise, but to the weight of the historical past, so densely of a great artist, Watteau, whose ability to paint in grandeur naturelle was formerly present in the Carrousel both in the form of the architecture of the ancien régime, unknown. Neglected by the average passer-by, the detective identifies the fragment’s pressing in on three sides, and in the form of the dusty shops of the marchands de importance, and acquires it for his collection – that great repository of fragments, tableaux et de bric à brac. the explanatory narrative for which is created by the collector. Giving voice to the It was in one of these shops that Clement de Ris situated Denon’s discovery of silent object in the form of historical context of sense-making narrative was the great Pierrot, dit Gilles : task of the nineteenth-century collector and critic, because the silence of a work of art signified the loss of history and the loss of sense. Without sense, without nar- En 1804, [Pierrot, dit Gilles] était étalé par terre à la porte d’un obscur marchand rative, history was experienced as an oppressive silence, as dark and as dank as the de bric-a-brac de la place du Carrousel, à qui il servait d’enseigne. Pour attirer les walls of the Carrousel du Louvre. If, as I suggested earlier, Pierrot asks for his master chalands, le pauvre diable avait écrit à la craie, sur la figure même, ce refrain d’un to give him a voice, the Pierrot in the Carrousel, lent a plaintive cry by the words of ancien vaudeville : the marchand, asked Denon to transform his cry into a statement of triumph.

Que Pierrot serait content S’il avait l’art de vous plaire ! Criers Denon passait tous les jours devant cette boutique. L’appel incessant de cette ensei- gne finit par lui agacer les nerfs. Il céda à la tentation, et, malgré les reproches de Silence can operate both as a constraint and a privilege. The nineteenth-century pan- son maître David, finit par emporter le Gilles pour 300 francs. En un demi-siècle, tomime did not possess the privilege of speech. Although the extraordinary Deburau la somme a dix fois centuplé. made a virtue of this restriction, the right to speak was a privilege accorded only L. Clément de Ris, Les Amateurs d’autrefois, Paris, E. Plon et. Cie, 1877, p. 446. to a higher class of performer and theatre. In other cases, however, silence signifies 142 Marika T. Knowles Pierrot’s Silence 143

Copyright image redacted. The image can a kind of absolute power – the privilege not Copyright image redacted. The image can be viewed by accessing the final be viewed by accessing the final to have to explain or justify one’s appearance published version here: https://www.degruyter.com/viewbooktoc/product/504368 published version here: through text. As this brief history of Pierrot’s https://www.degruyter.com/viewbooktoc/pr silence shows, Pierrot has never been allowed oduct/504368 to remain silent. I would like to conclude this essay then, with a brief discussion of a genre of image in which the silence of figures is explicitly not allowed. The marchand who wrote the verses of a vaudeville on Pierrot, dit Gilles effectively transformed the painting into an enormous iteration of the genre of the Cri. The genre of the Cris, popular in seventeenth- through nineteenth-century Europe, shows itinerant vendors advertising their wares in urban set- tings.38 These etchings and engravings are not portraits, but types, yet they do pay an unprecedented amount of attention to the appearance of members of the lower classes, represented, for the first time, alone, and not as part of a group. Appearing alone is anoth-

2 Jean Baptiste and Henri Bonnart, Le porteur d’eau, s.d. (ca. er kind of privilege, a statement of the ability 1676), hand-colored engraving on paper, 36.5 × 23.8 cm, Los to hold the stage of the image without help. Angeles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art Yet the criers do not appear entirely alone, rather, they are accompanied by their ‘cry’, written beneath the figure. The “cry” identifies the person with their ware. In this way, the appearance of the crier becomes subject to the merchandise he or she offers for sale, so that the attached text justifies the figure’s presence. Thus the genre of the criers gave urban dwellers a typological map of lower-class types.39 Text, in this case, disciplined the lower classes, categorizing and labelling a threatening silence. Rather than show themselves triumphantly, the criers appear beleaguered (fig. 2). The weight of their wares, bundled onto their bodies, distorting their silhouettes into weird hybrids of person and object for sale, is equalled only by the obligation to self-identify according to what they sell. Watteau captures some of this ennui in his representation of Pierrot, the fatigue of being forced to present oneself as some- thing else, in this case, as Pierrot, the laughing stock and the fool. Yet Pierrot, except for the brief, apocryphal moment in the Carrousel, does not possess a legend, and in this sense he is distinct from the crier. What the crier wants is enter the world of pure visuality, where text is not needed, where silence reigns supreme. There is a certain, conspicuously silent pleasure taken by Louis XIV, as he wraps his enor- mous ermine robe around his shapely calves, beneath his great crimson tent, sur- 3 Hyacinthe Rigaud, Louis XIV, 1701, oil on canvas, 277 × 194 cm, Paris, Musée du Louvre 144 Marika T. Knowles Pierrot’s Silence 145

rounded by the accoutrements of the Sacré (fig. 3). While the crier must vocalize his 1 On the Hofnarr, see Heinz-Günter Schmitz, “Claus Narr 17 For the pantomimic expression codified by the Acad- und seine Zunft, Erscheinungsformen und Funktion des emy’s conférences, see Henri Testelin, Sentiments des plus ha- reason for being on the street or in a picture, thereby subjecting his identity to text, spätmittelalterlichen Narren”, in Katrin Kröll and Hugo Ste- biles peintres sur la pratique de la peinture et sculpture, Paris, the king’s visual identity communicates itself without words. In Pierrot, dit Gilles, ger (eds.), Mein ganzer Körper ist Gesicht : Groteske Darstel- 1696, Table Troisième. On the ‘mute poetry’ of history Pierrot usurps the silence that is the king’s privilege. lungen in der europäischen Kunst und Literatur des Mittelalters, painting, see also Volker Schröder, “‘Le langage de la Pein- But also the animal’s privilege. Another figure of silence in Watteau’s large paint- Romach, 1994, pp. 385–399. ture est le langage des muets’ : remarques sur un motif de 2 Columbine Avocat Pour et Contre, comédie en trois actes, l’esthétique classique”, in René Démoris (ed.), Hommage ing is the donkey. This donkey, whose doleful single eye fixes the viewer, is cropped mise au théâtre par Monsieur D, in Evariste Gherardi, Le à Elizabeth Sophie Chérou : texte et peinture à l’âge classique, to that eye, a brief stretch of head, and an ear. A rope is fastened around its neck, Théâtre italien de Gherardi ou le recueil général de toutes les Paris, 1992, pp. 95–110. finished by a flourish of pink ribbon, tied in a bow. The pink ribbon establishes a comédies et scènes françoises jouées par les comédiens italiens du 18 Tom Stammers, “The bric-à-brac of the Ancien Régime : roi, pendant tout le temps qu’ils ont été au service de sa Majesté, Collecting and Cultural History in Post-Revolutionary definitive link between the donkey and Pierrot. Pierrot’s white shoes – placed only Amsterdam, 1701, vol. 1, p. 312. France”, in French History 22/3, 2008, pp. 295–315. a few inches away from the donkey – are tied with two pink ribbons, little Rococo 3 Richard Andrews (ed. and trans.), The Commedia dell’arte 19 On the Romantic fragment, see the classic text by Henri flourishes to embellish Pierrot’s great expanse of white. Using the rope tied around of Flaminio Scala, Lanham (MA), 2008, pp. xxxvii–xxxix. Zerner and Charles Rosen, Romanticism and Realism : The the donkey’s neck, the cavalier in red attempts to tug the donkey and its rider, the 4 On the Comédie Italienne at the fair, see N. M. Ber- Mythology of Nineteenth Century Art, London, 1984, pp. nardin, La Comédie Italienne en France et les Théâtres de la 24–28. black-suited Crispin-like figure, from left to right. The donkey, however, resists. The Foire et du Boulevard 1570–1791, Paris, 1902, pp. 79–150. 20 This utter absence of documentation, as well as other donkey’s refusal to move also aligns him with Pierrot, who stands still, declining For an encyclopedic account, based on archival sources, of factors that complicate the painting’s attribution to Watteau, to participate in the left to right unfolding of narrative that marks the Poussinian fair performers, business owners, and censor’s reports on are discussed in Christian Michel, Le “Célèbre” Watteau, Ge- performances see Émile Campardon, Les Spectacles de la foire, neva, 2008, p. 269. historical subject. Both Pierrot and the donkey manifest a stubborn desire to remain depuis 1595 jusqu’à 1791, Geneva, 1970. See also François 21 This is an argument I explore in depth in my disserta- silent, to taste for themselves the pleasure of the king, whose fabric-like unfolding Moureau, De Gherardi à Watteau : Presence d’ Arlequin sous tion through close examination of influential period texts by across Rigaud’s canvas creates a ‘narrative’ of visual magnificence. Never mind that Louis XIV, Paris, 1992. Roger de Piles, Cours de peinture par principes, Paris, 1708 ; 5 On the transformation of the fair theatre into the Opéra Charles-Alphonse du Fresnoy, L’art de peinture, Paris, 1688, neither Pierrot, nor the donkey, unfurls himself with the king’s same gusto, this is Comique, see François Moureau, Le Goût Italien dans la translated from Latin by de Piles ; and Antoine Coypel, Epî- part of the painting’s burlesquing of the grand manner, to replace the king’s silence France Rocaille : Théâtre, musique, peinture, 1680–1750, tre à mon fils, Paris, 1708. See also Thomas Puttfarken, Roger with silent figures that are so very un-magnificent. Paris, 2011. de Piles’ Theory of Art, New Haven, 1985. Audiences, critics, and collectors who have given Pierrot speech, whether by speak- 6 On the Funambules, see Louis Péricaud, Le Théâtre des 22 Here I echo Michel’s argument that Watteau’s current Funambules, Ses Mimes, ses Acteurs et ses Pantomimes, Depuis popularity is indebted to the ease with which Watteau – “in- ing for him (putting words in his mouth), writing about him, or telling stories about sa Fondation, Jusqu’à sa Demolition, Paris, 1897. See also stable, éternellement insatisfait, exprimant la mélancolie him, do not seem to wonder whether Pierrot in fact wants to speak. Lending Pierrot Tristan Rémy, Jean-Gaspard Deburau, Paris, 1954. profonde qui l’habite dans ses toiles” – can be read as “un ar- a voice says more about the desires of the audience than about Pierrot. Which is 7 George Sand wrote about the relationship between De- tiste romantique ou post-romantique”. Michel, 2008 (note burau and his audience of gamins. See George Sand, “De- 20), p. 269. The reader of Pierre Rosenberg, Vies Anciennes not necessarily to critique the desire – Pierrot exists in part to reflect, to willingly burau” [Feb. 1846], in Questions d’art et de littérature, Paris, de Watteau, Paris, 1984, will also notice Gersaint’s, Caylus’ become whatever the viewer suggests about him. This is one of the ways in which 1878, pp. 215–222. and Jullienne’s comments on Watteau’s introverted and sulky Pierrot allegorizes the silence of the work of art as a space of projection. Perhaps, 8 Janin’s best-selling biography of Deburau was culled from temperament. however, like Melville’s Bartelby, Pierrot would “prefer not to” speak. In this case, previously published material in his feuilleton. See Jules Ja- 23 Based on evidence culled from several inventories, nin, Deburau, Histoire du Théâtre à Quatre Sous[1832], Paris, Christian Michel has suggested that Jullienne and Gersaint the silence of the work of art assumes not transparency, but substance and opacity ; 1881. bought all the unfinished work that remained in Watteau’s Pierrot may say nothing to us, but he offers instead the substance of art itself, materi- 9 Jules Janin, “Théâtre Français : Première représentation studio. Michel, 2008 (note 20), pp. 43–44. ally resistant to the mediation of text, existentially present. Thus Pierrot asks not to du Nègre, drame en quatre actes et en vers libres, par M. 24 Denon cited in Rosenberg, 1984 (note 22), p. 126. Ozanneaux”, in Journal des Débats, 1 Nov. 1830, pp. 1–3. 25 A. N. Pérignon, Description des objets d’art qui composent be spoken for, but to be granted the privilege of silence. 10 Ibid. le cabinet de feu m. le Baron V. Denon, Paris, 1826, pp. 86– 11 Ibid. 87. 12 Ibid. 26 This was in response to a presentation of my work at 13 On this incident and the subsequent trial, see Péricaud, a graduate student symposium, when a distinguished cura- 1897 (note 6), pp. 154–162. tor angrily refuted my arguments. Two weeks later, I was 14 This meeting is described in Carole Aurouet,Le Cinéma introduced to the scholar in Paris. He had attended, and Dessiné de Jacques Prévert, Paris, 2012, p. 109. remembered my talk and the animated discussion that had 15 Jill Forbes, Les Enfants du Paradis, London, 1997, pp. followed. He was eager to discuss the problem, but at the 34–36. same time urged me to focus my attention on other things. 16 Alan Williams, Republic of Images : A History of French 27 The Louvre staunchly defends the attribution to Wat- Filmmaking, Cambridge, MA/London, 1992, pp. 180–183. teau. The Louvre’s conservators and technicians have assessed 146 Marika T. Knowles

the painting’s material condition. See Marie-Catherine Sa- 30 Between 1834 and 1836, Théophile Gautier, Arsène hut and Elisabeth Martin (et. al.), “Pierrot de Watteau, dit Houssaye, and Gérard de Nerval congregated in the apart- autrefois Gilles, perspectives de recherche”, in Techne 30/31, ment of the painter Camille Rogier in the Impasse du Doy- 2009–2010, pp. 82–95. These reports indisputably estab- enné, a dead-end street in the Carrousel. The “Cenacle du lish that the painting was made in the eighteenth century. Doyenné”, as the group came to be called, gave rise to sever- Yet no further attribution to the ‘hand of Watteau’ is pos- al nostalgic accounts of the Carrousel, published during the sible, especially since there are no other extant paintings that 1850s, long after the Cenacle had disbanded. I have written show Watteau painting figures at this scale, an enterprise about the Cenacle and their role in the nineteenth-century that requires quite a different technique from that used for Rococo revival elsewhere, see Marika Knowles, “Pierrot’s his stock in trade of small, miniaturized figures. Periodicity : Watteau, Nadar and the Circulation of the Ro- 28 The first account of Denon’s discovery appeared in an coco”, in Melissa Hyde and Katie Scott (eds.), Rococo Echo, article published by Pierre Hédouin in L’ Artiste. L’ Artiste Oxford, 2014. was one of the first periodicals to begin publishing articles 31 For a history of this neighbourhood, see Carl de Vinck, about the art of the eighteenth century, well before the Gon- Place du Carrousel, Paris, 1931. court’s publications on the period in the second half of the 32 Balzac, La Cousine Bette [1846], Paris, 1977, p. 100 ; nineteenth century. See Pierre Hédouin, “Watteau III”, in Gautier, “Marilhat”, in Revue de Paris, July 1848. L’ Artiste, 4ème série/5, 1845, p. 79. Hédouin locates De- 33 Baudelaire, “Le Cygne”, in Les Fleurs du Mal [1861], non’s discovery in the shop of ‘M. Meuniez, marchand de Paris, 1975, p. 86. tableaux’. A search for marchand de tableaux in Tynna’s Al- 34 Edmond de Goncourt, cited in Vinck, 1931 (note 31), manach de Paris, between 1798 and 1812 yields a “Meunier”, p. 59. listed for eight consecutive years as a Marchand de tableaux 35 Arsène Houssaye, Les Confessions : Souvenirs d’un demi- et de curiosités with a boutique at 11, Quai Voltaire, former- siècle 1830–1880, vol. 1, Paris, 1885, p. 288. ly the Quai des Théatins. See J. de la Tynna,Almanach du 36 Emile de la Bédollière, 1848, cited in Vinck, 1931 (note Commerce de Paris, des Départements de l’Empire Français, et 31), p. 70. des Principales Villes du Monde, Paris, 1808. Meunier prob- 37 For one discussion of this phenomenon, see Shelley ably died in 1808, because in 1809 his wife and son are list- Rice, Parisian Views, Cambridge, MA, 1997, pp. 74–75. ed at adjacent addresses on the Rue de Seine-St-Germaine, 38 Two helpful sources on the cris are Karen F. Beall, Kau- with Meunier fils selling the curiostiés and Madame Meunier frufe und Strassenhändler : Eine Bibliographie, Hamburg, (presumably Meunier’s widow), selling tableaux. After 1809, 1975, and Vincent Milliot, Les cris de Paris ou le peuple trav- however, the entire family appears to have fallen out of busi- esti : les représentations des petits métiers parisiens, Paris, 1995. ness. 39 On the cris as a disciplinary regime, see Wolfgang 29 L. Clément de Ris, Les Amateurs d’autrefois, Paris, 1877, Steinitz, “Les cris de Paris” und die Kaufrufdarstellung in der p. 446. Druckgraphik bis 1800, Salzburg, 1971, pp. 18–22.